Cuban exile Alberto Gutiérrez sends a Reuters report (4/23/04) on Oliver
Stone's second documentary on Fidel Castro, of which here is an excerpt: Cuban
dissidents and the top U.S. diplomat in Havana gave Oliver Stone's second documentary
on Cuban leader Fidel Castro bad reviews Friday, saying it failed to present
an objective view. In "Looking for Fidel", which aired April 14 on
HBO, the 77-year-old leader told the film director he had no intention of stepping
down after 45 years, stating: "I am not the one in power. It is the people
who are in power. I think I will die on the job,"

The head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Cuba, James Cason, invited Cuban
dissidents to his home to watch the documentary. Cason quoted them as saying
they found it "insulting" that Stone had not personally interviewed
the wives of jailed dissidents and had sent an assistant instead. "This
should have been called 'Justifying Fidel' not 'Looking for Fidel'," Cason
said. The diplomat said the message of Stone's film was that repression was
justified in Cuba because the Bush administration was planning to invade the
island. "It's the conspiracy theory that Stone has always had in his films,"
said Cason, who said Washington was seeking a peaceful post-Castro transition
in Havana.

In the film, Stone asked Castro about political freedom and the future of Cuba,
asking him if he was prepared to hand over to a younger generation of leaders.
Castro said he had no intention of pleasing President Bush and the thought of
relinquishing his post as "comandante" had not crossed his mind. A
year ago, Cuba rounded up 75 dissidents who were given prison terms of up to
28 years for conspiring with the United States to undermine Castro's revolution.
HBO yanked a flattering 2003 Stone documentary about Castro called "Comandante"
because it failed to mention last year's crackdown on dissent. HBO asked Stone
to go back to Cuba and interview Castro again.

RH: I have not seen the film and have little information about Oliver Stone,
so I hesitate to make any comment. However, this does show the danger of having
a movie maker form US public opinion about Castro-

Randy Black says "I have seen the Castro interviews with Oliver Stone twice
on HBO. They are entertaining, but certainly one-sided in their portrayal of
the Cuban leader. Stone makes movies, period. He is no more a historian than
is Barbra Streisand. The most amazing thing to me about Castro is that he has
survived so long. I didn’t give him a year in 1959. After the collapse
of the USSR, again, I figured perhaps a year, max. Boy was I wrong!" RH:
This raises the question as to how Castro has survived all these years. Is there
a list of how long dictators have survived? Does Castro top the list?

Cuba: End to Market Reforms

Regarding Cuba's end to market reforms, Tim Ashby sends an article from Hispanic
Business (April 2004), here excerpted:- Havana's port authority was running
a catering business. An industrial construction company was rebuilding and remodelling
homes. Another government agency was repairing boilers on the side. For years,
Cuba's cash-starved businesses and state-run agencies have been allowed to develop
specialities far outside their mandates to stay afloat. This practice appears
to be ending. "That's all over," said the manager of a food processing
plant, sipping espresso on a recent Sunday morning. In his hands is a copy of
Circular 04/200 - a government directive that from April 1 has demanded that
such secondary businesses cease and desist. "They want to do away with
the dual peso and dollar economy and in the process reassert absolute control
over us," said the plant manager, who requested anonymity. "That means
more regulations, more inspectors, more difficulties and delays making things
work." The order's objective, the circular says, is "to adjust entities'
social objectives to their primary function and suspend payment in hard currency
for services that do not correspond to those functions".

The government has reduced the number of small private businesses allowed to
operate food outlets, bed and breakfast establishments and other minor services.
Increased regulation of foreign companies has resulted in dozens of small joint
ventures and trading companies packing up shop. The shift on keeping companies
to their primary objectives is likely to reverse many of the market mechanisms
introduced to help the government survive the downfall of the Soviet Union.
The move reflects the renewed embrace of centralised state-planning by Fidel
Castro, president since 1959. Western diplomats say the changes follow Mr Castro's
increasingly conservative trend - perhaps most obvious with last year's crackdown
on dissent, that left 75 of the government's most vocal critics with long prison
terms and relations with Europe at their lowest point in years. "Cuba's
economy is moving in one direction and China's and Vietnam's another,"
one European diplomat said. Last year the government banned most companies from
using the dollar, requiring them to convert their dollar holdings for convertible
pesos, which are pegged to the US currency but have no value outside Cuba. Businessmen
say they have been swamped with new regulations further restricting their operations
and access to foreign exchange since December.

Paraguay: Nueva Germania

From Canada, Gerda Harder writes: "I found several reports of yours on
the internet focused on Paraguay, and more specifically Nueva Germania. I found
them interesting, because I was born and raised in Nueva Germania. Now I live
in Canada. I also found a song "Nueva Germania". May I ask what your
interests are and your connection to Nueva Germania?" RH: WAIS is interested
in every country in the world, indeed in every corner of the world. I have been
to Paraguay several times, and other WAISers, including Tim Brown, have spent
time there. If Tim remembers Nueva Germania, we might wish to tell us about
it. The special reason for our interest was its connection with the Nietzsche
family. Its founding was a manifestation of a certain phase of German ideology.
An odd reason for our interest is that a small community near Los Angeles has
a sister relationship with Nueva Germania, and produced the song "Nueva
Germania". The composer wrote us about his plans to visit Hueva Germania.
We would be most interested if Gerda Harder would e-mail me an account of the
history of Nueva Germania and of her experiences there. I would then post it
for the members of WAIS.

Gerda Harder, a native of Nueva Germania in Paraguay who now lives in Canada,
writes: "My dad's mother's family were among the early settlers; their
last name is Schubert. My dad's father came from Germany I believe in 1930.
My mom's father came from Germany sometimes in 1935, but my mom's mother's parents
came with the early settlers; their last name is Buettner. Other families are
Flaskamp and Fischer; they are still there. I have not visited Nueva Germania
in eleven years, but I'm planning to go there in December. I will certainly
put something together for you". RH: We look forward to Gerda's report.

Of the posting about Nueva Germania, Paraguay, Cjristopher Jones writes: "This
message is potentially a major breakthrough. In particular, I would like to
know if Gerda Harder's family was among the early settlers who travelled with
Bernhard Förster and Elisabeth Nietzsche to Nueva Germania in the 1880s
and to what extent Nietzsche's philosophy is remembered among its citizens.
Is German still spoke in Nueva Germania? Are there any official ties between
Nueva Germania and its Vaterland? Or has the Bundesrepublik turned its back
on them?" RH: Nueva Germania was supposed to embody Nietzsche's philosophy.
What does that mean?

Cuba: Central Planning

Tim Ashby says: "Castro's attempt to recentralize the Cuban economy will
do more to hasten the end of his regime than any actions by the US. Allowing
Cubans to have small-scale free enterprise provided a safety valve for popular
discontent. The Pandora's Box of a free market was opened a decade ago, and
the furies of entrepreneurialism can't be crammed back inside". Here is
a report from Havana (Reuters, 04/15/04): - Managers of Cuba's state enterprises
have been told to hand over their expensive cars like Toyotas and Mitsubishis
and stick to the more proletarian Russian-made Ladas or smaller vehicles. Nor
can they drive cars with decorations or air-conditioning, which has set them
apart from ordinary Cubans in the sweltering heat of tropical summer. It's part
of President Fidel Castro's campaign to roll back the market-oriented reforms
that gave rise to social differences in an officially classless, communist-run
society. The most recent clampdown has targeted executives of state companies,
whose perks are under fire.

A decade ago, Cuba sowed the seeds of capitalism when it reluctantly legalized
the U.S. dollar and permitted some private enterprise as it battled to survive
a post-Soviet meltdown of its centrally planned economy. State corporations,
particularly those involved in tourism, the Caribbean island's main hard currency
earner, adopted modern business practices. With that came the perks and status
symbols of capitalist society that are now being wrung out of the economy. But
inspectors have begun fanning out this month to make sure executives are complying
with a Transport Ministry circular specifying what cars they can use. Anything
bigger than a Lada will be handed over to the ministries and state protocol
service, according to the document seen by Reuters. "Cuban officials feel
they have weathered the crisis and it's time for the state to take an even more
central role in the economy," said Phil Peters, an exert on Cuba at Washington's
Lexington Institute think tank. "They are opting for equality over growth,"
he said. Orthodox socialists who held their noses over the reforms following
the loss of Soviet aid are running policy again, Peters said.

Increased circulation of the U.S. currency brought division between haves and
have nots -- Cubans with dollars and those with no access to dollars who remained
stuck in the peso economy. In a country where monthly salaries average $15 and
a taxi driver can earn more from tourists in a day than a brain surgeon earns
in a month, small capitalists known as "cuentapropistas" multiplied
fast. To cover a dramatic shortage of services, the government licensed many
Cubans over the last decade to have small businesses, from plumbers to taxi
drivers. For a year, Cuban regulators have been chasing unauthorized private
entrepreneurs and heavily taxing licensed businesses like room rentals for tourists
and small family restaurants called "paladares." Red tape has forced
many out of business. Western diplomats said Cuba is retrenching economically
as well as politically. They point to a crackdown on dissent last year and increased
regulation of foreign companies too. "The number of joint ventures fell
by 70 last year, and will decline by a similar number this year. Tens of thousands
of small independent business have folded in recent years under government pressure
and small foreign trading companies are packing their bags," a European
commercial attache said.

In the state sector, which accounts for 90 percent of the economy, a re-centralization
is underway, as the government takes back decision-making power that had gone
from ministries to state companies. Local analysts say Castro views state business
managers as a potentially corrupting force that played a role in bringing down
East European communism. He would like to end private Cuban businesses and do
away with the dollar, the currency of his arch-enemy the United States, they
said. In recent speeches, Castro has criticized costly imports by too many state
companies and justified centralized control over dollar reserves that cash-strapped
Cuba badly needs to pay for essential food and oil imports. "The decentralization
of hard currency has gone further than planned and begun to cover unnecessary
expenses," Economy Minister Rodriguez told the National Assembly in December.
Cuba's Caribbean beaches attract thousands of European and Canadian sun seekers
that bring in hard currency, while remittances to Cubans from U.S. relatives
is a key source of dollars. State corporations that branched out into a myriad
of dollar-earning services trying to be financially self-sufficient -- from
shops to restaurants -- have been told to concentrate on their core business,
according to a circular sent out by Economy Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez. A
document seen by Reuters lists 87 services that can no longer be charged in
dollars.

Havana allowed the dollar to circulate freely alongside the peso in 1993 and
it quickly became the currency of choice since the local currency buys little
Cubans want. Last August, the Central Bank introduced exchange controls and
banned state companies from using dollars in most operations, requiring usage
of the convertible peso, a locally printed currency equal to the dollar but
with no value outside Cuba. Dozens of executives of the two largest corporations,
Cimex and Cubanacan, were removed over alleged mishandling of dollars, charging
of commissions and the use of foreign bank accounts. The government also ended
the freedom most state companies had gained to import goods. "It's a double
blow. First the dollars were taken away, and now the right to trade and make
independent decisions," a Cuban economist said. "We are going back
to the 1980s when everything was centralized."